


Truth Hidden and Revealed

by alpacasandravens



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Magnus Archives Fusion, Angst, Eye!Jonathan, M/M, Spiral!Jervis, set during Mag S5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24861739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: In the vast wasteland of the new world, Gotham City was no ordinary fear domain. Long before the eye was opened and fear rained down upon the world, the dread powers had held their own in corners of the city.In a city so accustomed to fear, the change was not drastic. In the countryside, small towns caved in on themselves, losing all of their character to the aspect of fear that took it over. In Gotham, the fears fought for blocks of territory just as the gangs had before. Jonathan watched them all from his domain, a few square blocks of the north side of town that never harmed anyone, but always made them uncomfortably aware that though they could see no one, someone could see their every thought.
Relationships: Jonathan Crane/Jervis Tetch, background one-sided Jeremiah Valeska/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Truth Hidden and Revealed

**Author's Note:**

> Beware! This fic might be incomprehensible if you haven't listened to the first four seasons of The Magnus Archives, and definitely offers major spoilers for the season 4 finale. That said, it is a Gotham fic, so it only has Gotham characters (though some Magnus characters are referenced).

Once upon a time, fear became sentient. Not sentient as any ordinary human would understand, not possessing of a consciousness. This was a different kind of sentience, a malevolence that fed on humanity for its very sustenance and lived only to feed. 

No one knows how long these fears have existed. No one, in fact, truly knows if they are one fear or many, though Smirke claimed to have counted fourteen. They have always been, existing and feeding, and then one day they existed and fed in a much more tangible sense. This was the day the sky opened its eyelid.

In the vast wasteland of the new world, Gotham City was no ordinary fear domain. Long before the eye was opened and fear rained down upon the world, the dread powers had held their own in corners of the city. The Spider stretched her webs with the hand of Oswald Cobblepot. The boardwalk carnival, one memorable night, drew nearly enough energy for I Do Not Know You to reach a long, wax hand into this world. 

Most residents avoided such incidents, blocked them out as figments of their imagination or the byproduct of the city’s notoriously toxic air and drinking water. But Gerald Crane, chemistry teacher at Gotham High, saw the pockets of fear form. He raced ahead of them, performing calculation after experiment after calculation, and his son watched, eyes wide, drinking it all in. Jonathan Crane watched after his father’s life faded into the earth, after the fear vaccine he injected failed. 

_ That is but a taste of the fear this city holds _ , the family scarecrow whispered to Jonathan as he lay prone on the grass.  _ Would you like to see more? _

“Yes,” he breathed. 

For all his watching, Jonathan never knew which Entity Jeremiah Valeska served. Instead, the man seemed to devote all his worship to Bruce Wayne, who, much like the all-seeing Eye Jonathan served, did not care for him at all. Jonathan watched as Bruce succumbed to his fear like all the rest. He did not see what Jeremiah found so endlessly entertaining, what part of this young man caused him to pledge his entire being to him. After a dose of fear gas, he screamed and cried like anyone else. 

Still, the Mother of Puppets spun her webs around Jeremiah like anyone else. She whispered into Jeremiah’s ear, “Why does he care more for some gunman than for you? Shouldn’t you be his everything, as he is for you?” She drew his fingers to the bombs, and she watched the bridges blow with him. “Now he will always think of you,” she congratulated Jeremiah. 

The Eye had other plans. Jeremiah Valeska and his bridge-blowing stunt quickly became old news after the sky blinked and turned its gaze upon the city.

In a city so accustomed to fear, the change was not drastic. In the countryside, small towns caved in on themselves, losing all of their character to the aspect of fear that took it over. In Gotham, the fears fought for blocks of territory just as the gangs had before. Jonathan watched them all from his domain, a few square blocks of the north side of town that never harmed anyone, but always made them uncomfortably aware that though they could see no one, someone could see their every thought. 

Despite that, few left his realm. The knowledge of secrets revealed, of privacy rendered obsolete, seemed a small price to pay rather than walk into the neighboring realm. There, the Firefly would take pleasure in burning all of those secrets to the ground. 

In a small warehouse between Jonathan’s territory and the river, the Spiral kept its hideaway. Jonathan found himself Watching it many nights, desperate to know what occurred in there, hidden from his sight. 

“The building need not be large,” Jervis Tetch, avatar of the Spiral and possibly (definitely) Jonathan’s ex, told him one night not long after the Eye opened. “Reality in there is a mere illusion - the interior is endless and it is cramped and it doubles back on itself.”

Jonathan nodded. He sat on the roof of a building across the street from Jervis’s domain, while Jervis stood at an open window that placed him at nearly the same height. Behind him, Jonathan could see wildly conflicting images - a hallway that went on forever, a man trapped between two mirrors and staring at his screaming reflection in both. 

“Come in,” Jervis said with an inviting smile. “You want to know so badly, why don’t you come see?”

“You know I can’t.” 

The smile Jervis gave in response confirmed that he did. “If the Ceaseless Watcher controls us all and feeds from all our fear, why is it that my domain is hidden from its gaze?”

Jonathan shrugged. “I am not the Archive. He could See you.”

“Does that make you angry?”

“Not being the Archive? No.”

Jervis shook his head. “Are you angry that there is something you might never be able to See?”

Jonathan glared at him.

“If it helps, your domain frustrates me equally. All the truth in there makes me want to,” he pauses for a second, raising a hand whose fingers rapidly grow more knuckles and joints, twisting through the air in impossible shapes, “distort it.”

Somewhere behind Jonathan, a new image of terror emerged. He leaned back and stared at what used to be the sky, reveling in the feeling of someone else’s fear. 

“One day, I will see your lies. When that happens, I believe the walls you’ve built will fall around you.”

“I do not know that I exist apart from the lies of my being,” Jervis responded. “Would seeing me not kill me?”

“It might.”

“Might then lies not also kill you?”

“They might.”

“And yet you’re here anyway.”

Jonathan nodded. “For information only.”

Jervis laughed. “Lies aren’t your strong suit. Leave those to me.”

Jervis left a book on Jonathan’s side of the sidewalk. Jonathan was not there, but he watched anyway. Color swirled around the book, leeching off its cover and out of its pages to curl in the air like smoke. That same color emanated from Jervis’s domain, lies in every hue imaginable. Jervis himself seemed paler as he said to no one, “I thought you might enjoy this book. I know I did.” He tipped his hat with shaky fingers as he crossed the empty street again. 

Much later, Jonathan poked the book with a gloved hand. He didn’t have to open it to know what name he would find within - Jurgen Leitner. He did not have to read the letters that never stood still to find out the original text, either. Though he had never really known Jervis, he had been by his side for months. This book was Alice in Wonderland, and it was Jervis’s basic truth.

Part of the reason Jonathan thought his and Jervis’s relationship had worked so well, back before the bridges blew and the sky blinked, was because he could not know him. The Eye may care about reveling in the discomfort of knowing secrets, but Jonathan had been drawn into its service out of simple curiosity. He wanted to know, and the fear of that discovery, though it physically sustained him, was trivial. 

Sustained interest in anyone or anything, after he knew everything there was to know about it, was next to impossible. Jonathan was not interested in being close to someone whose mind he could easily understand better than even they understood it. He had loved Jervis and Jerome because, no matter how much he tried, there would always be some fundamental contradiction to their being that would elude him. They were like puzzles he could never solve but that always left him feeling close to a breakthrough. 

Now, Jerome was dead and the solidification of their domains had separated him from Jervis.

“You don’t want to come inside,” Jervis said once, sitting high above the street in a window of his domain, legs kicking slowly in the night air.

“Yes, I do.”

Jervis laughed softly. “That’s a lie.”

Jonathan crossed his arms. “It is not.”

“I’m so proud of you. The Eye has a servant who is lying, what a beautiful day.”

Sometimes, Jonathan forgot how obnoxious Jervis was. Now, he wanted to strangle him. “Do you want to enter  _ my _ domain?” he asked.

“No. All that truth… would be bad for me.”

_ I know _ , Jonathan wanted to say. If he crossed the street, he wasn’t sure whether he would see through the warehouse’s lies before they unmade him. He thought both options sounded equally terrible. “I know I can’t enter, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to know what I would find.” No, the end of the mystery was the only thing that would stop that.

From his rooftop, Jonathan saw Jervis in the center of his kingdom. He poured thoughts into his mind, flashes of knowledge and remembered emotion. He felt it twist as it entered Jervis’s head and screwed his eyes shut against the sight, focusing on the knowledge he was transmitting. Much as he could not know Jervis, Jervis could not - would not - twist him into a convenient lie. He sent knowledge of his place above Gotham and within the Eye above him, the way his curiosity extended to learning of all the fears. How even still, nothing fascinated him so much as the interior of Jervis’s domain. 

“I want to know what’s inside,” Jonathan said, standing in the middle of the street in front of the warehouse, “but not as much as I want to Know you.”

“The unknown is more exciting. Secrets, once revealed, are simply known, but secrets kept are a nagging mystery forever.”

“I didn’t mind so much, before.”

“Neither did I.”

Jonathan’s god may have been that of truths revealed, but he still hesitated to reveal this one. “It was simpler before. I almost miss it.”

Jervis cocked his head to the side and made an expression Jonathan thought, with a flash of hatred and endearment, made Jervis look like a confused puppy. “Is this not the future we worked toward for those years?” He gestured to the building behind him, the manifestation of a lie.

“This isn’t a challenge.”

“I’m ruling,” Jervis said petulantly. “This is what I want.”

Jonathan had never felt compelled before. He had compelled many others to tell their darkest secrets, but his were known only to him and the Ceaseless Watcher who knows all things. “I want what we had before,” he said, the truth pulled from him almost unwillingly. “I am trapped here as much as you are trapped there.”

“And is this not enough for you? We are like gods.”

Jonathan reached out, his hand finding Jervis’s. When his hand crossed the midway point of the street, his fingers began to stretch and twist like Jervis’s did, and his skin seemed almost to bubble. He pulled Jervis’s hand across to his side of the road, and it lost all its color, becoming nothing more than a collection of bones.

Jervis pulled his hand back as if stung. “I am happy here. I am very happy.”

_ “What do you want?” _ Jonathan put every ounce of compulsion he could muster into that question. Jervis shook his head, trying his best to fight off the need to answer, but the Eye was stronger.

“To feel complete again,” Jervis said quietly. “Like I did with you.”

Jonathan sighed and nodded. “Me too.” He hated that knowing that didn’t change anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Did that make sense? No. But did I enjoy combining two of my favorite things into one fic? Yes. Comments/kudos are very very welcome!


End file.
